((I’m not an expert, I’ve been reading up on things as much as I can. If there’s an error, I’ll happily correct it!))
TLDR:
- Nearly all of us distrust Meta and have the same broader goals
- We need to pick the best move to go against powerful companies like Meta
- Defederation may not be the right move, and it might even help Meta move forward (and more easily perform EEE)
- There are other options that we can spend our energy on
- It doesn’t matter for Lemmy (yet), this is more a conversation for Mastodon, Firefish and Kbin
We’ve been getting a LOT of posts on this, but the misconceptions make it harder for us to decide what to do. If we’re going to try and protect the Fediverse against large, well funded companies like Meta, figuring out the right action is important. We need to actually look at the options, consider the realistic outcomes, and plan around that.
I’m willing to bet around 95% of users on Lemmy and Mastodon CHOSE to be here because we understand the threat Meta/Facebook poses, and we want to do something about it. That’s not in question here.
So in that sense, please be kind to the other user you are replying to. The vast majority of us share the same goal here. When we disagree, we disagree on the best path forward and not the goal. Wanting to stay federated DOES NOT mean the user wants to help Meta or thinks that Meta is here for our benefit.
Misconception: Defederation will hinder Meta’s EEE
It might, but not necessarily, and it might even help the EEE. Here’s a link to some history of EEE, what it means, and some examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish. I’d recommend at least skimming it because it’s interesting (and because this isn’t the only fight)
Assuming Meta is doing an EEE move, they’re in the embrace stage. That’s not about us embracing them, it’s about them embracing the protocol, which they can do whether we stay federated or not.
Defederation can tell newcomers that the defederated instance is an island, and they’re better off joining the place where they can talk to their friends and see the content they want. We saw this early during the Reddit exodus with Beehaw, where many users hopped instances away from Beehaw.
Meta can more easily embrace if more people actively use their platform. They can more easily extend if we’re not around to explain why extending is a poisonous action. Being federated can allow us to encourage users to ditch Meta’s platform and join an open one (ex. Mastodon, Firefish, etc.)
Misconception: Defederation is the only move
Defederation is the first option that comes to mind. It sounds simple, it is loud and newsworthy, and it can be done with the click of a mouse. But if it is a bad action, then what are the good actions?
- Don’t let them have a monopoly over the use of ActivityPub. Grow the other platforms: The extend stage only works when the platform gets a near monopoly over use of the standard. That brings up the first action. If there are enough users, services and resources on things like Mastodon/Lemmy, then Meta (or any other company) can’t just extend the spec without causing their users to ditch Threads to stay connected to the content they want to see.
- Reach out to organizations in your area or line of work. Help them join Mastodon or other relevant Fediverse platforms. I’m sure the for-profit companies put money into this process, so brainstorm and reach out
- Add your Fediverse accounts to the bio of your other accounts, and share posts from the Fediverse elsewhere
As long as there is a healthy community away from Meta (ex. what we have right now), then they can’t extend & extinguish.
- Protect the Standards and share why it is important
- Share posts from experts about strict adherence to standards, support regulatory and legal advocacy (interoperability requirements etc.), and educate other users about the risks.
(I didn’t want to say more here because I’m not an expert, I’m happy to edit more points in)
Misconception: We should still defederate because of Privacy Risks
Not necessarily (and likely not at all?)
Meta is notorious for gathering data and then abusing that data, so this is an issue to consider. However, the way that activitypub works, the outgoing data is publicly available. Defederating with Meta doesn’t prevent that, and federating doesn’t give them any more data than they could get otherwise.
Misconception: Lemmy instances need to decide
This is a big point: It doesn’t really matter for Lemmy right now, one way or another.
It’s more of an issue when data starts coming IN to Lemmy from Mastodon and Meta’s Threads (or out from Lemmy to Threads). See below
Edit to add: For now it might even be good to defederate from Lemmy as a symbolic gesture. My instance is defederated, and I don’t plan on trying to change that. Ultimately it doesn’t change much
Legitimate risks from Federation with Meta, and more effective ways to counter them
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Algorithmic Amplification: Meta’s history of using algorithms that prioritize engagement can amplify harmful or divisive content. These algorithms are not public like it is with Mastodon and other FOSS platforms.
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Misinformation and Content Moderation: All Fediverse platforms will have to work on content moderation and misinformation. Platforms like Meta, focussed on profit and advertising, will likely moderate in a way that protects their income. Those moderation decisions will be federated around.
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Commercialization and User Exploitation: Meta’s for-profit nature means it’s incentivized to maximize user engagement, at the expense of our well-being.
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Additional Data on how the free fediverse interacts with their platform (this one is harder to make a counter for)
Counters:
- Promote user control over their feeds, and develop USEFUL but safe and open algorithms for the feeds
- Flag content and users from risky platforms, with a little warning icon and explanation (ex. ‘Content is from a for-profit platform, and it may ___’)
- Implement features so that users can opt in or opt out from seeing content from risky platforms. In particular on explore/discover/public feeds, so it doesn’t affect content the user is following.
- Develop strict community guidelines that can get Meta (and other companies) sent into the ‘blocked by default’ bins mentioned above. (edit: There’s a good point here that if Meta’a Threads is full of hatred or poor moderation, then blocking them is the right move)
Final point: Evaluate things critically. Don’t even just take my word for it. I doubt Meta or other groups care enough about Lemmy yet to spread disinformation here, and every post I’ve seen promoting defederation feels like a good faith attempt for something they believe in. But it’s still worth thinking about what we’re supporting.
Sometimes what feels like a good move might not help, and could even make things worse.
Boomer yells at cloud, incoming. Skip it if you want. You have been warned.
I don’t want anything at all to do with Meta or their shitty soylent green, and I intend to block them for myself as a single user. I don’t want to tell anyone else what they need to do.
But anyone who is convinced that a company that thinks it’s cool to manipulate emotion and create depression in its users, whose users (plural) have even taken their own lives because of the deliberately unmoderated but manipulated engagement-boosting emotive filth that Meta panders as a matter of course – and I’m totally not even addressing how far they have gone to help undermine democracies and democratic processes – is a company to safely be involved with even casually, then all I can say is that I don’t think they’ve lived long enough.
We are all literally sitting around here hypothesizing about what Meta will and will not do on the Fediverse because all of us, down to the last Lemizen, already knows that Meta fucking lies and we can’t believe a fucking word out of their mouths, so we have to guess.
And we’re doing that without even blinking: notice how NO ONE, absofuckinglutely NO ONE here, no matter how pro-Meta-federation they are, has suggested we ask Meta.
It’s because they already know. WE ALL ALREADY KNOW.
Goddamn, with this Meta shit I feel like I’m back in an abusive relationship where I have to stay three steps ahead of my partner just to be able to sleep at night, knowing there’s some fuckery going on because there always is, because that’s what they do, but having no idea what it is, and not even bothering with wasting words on the fool because all I’ll get back is shit, and then on top of everything if I ask I’ll have to act like there’s even the tiniest bit of truth to be found in those words.
And on and on it goes.
Lol, no.
Meta isn’t looking at what the Fediverse will be at some future point and betting on margins; Meta is looking at what the Fediverse already IS and how it can be manipulated for fun and profit. It’s what they do.
And even the people here who don’t want to admit it in so many words already know that’s what Meta does, in the same way that the cutest cats are happy to kill birds and enjoy every second of the slaughter without the least remorse. It’s not a moral question. They do it because they’re cats.
Meta is in the business of processing and redistributing brain product, using that processed brain product to get more brain product, and also getting more data on those brains so as to force more brain product from them as well as display targeted advertising at those brains every waking moment, because that’s Meta. That is what Meta does.
We – the Fediverse, its users, our communities, our online relationships, our comments – are product. The only difference between us here and those on Threads is that WE did not choose THEM, they chose us. Why? Well, what is it they make over there? Oh, yeah. That. And we’re just more of it.
The morality of the shit Meta gets up to is only a question for people with morals, like those people and governments who have demanded that Meta answer for its actions and implement change, but morals are NOT what Meta does. Anyone thinking Meta et al will do anything but chew up and spit out whatever they find here, including the federation itself, is deluded.
We all know this too: notice how NO ONE here is demanding that Meta do anything differently. They won’t. The thought itself is laughable. But see how quickly and completely we have internalized it, to the point that no one has yet suggested that META change in order to be allowed to federate, or that pre-conditions be placed on their federation.
This post does at least address some of the false dichotomies involved, and that’s a start. There are always things a collective of users can do to throw wrenches into works; one thing we could do as a collective is restrict our copyrights differently than we do now. Will Meta honor that? No, of course not, but having a provable misdeed like that makes it easier to kick them out whenever their plans do become clear.
If I start putting “© ChunkMcHorkle 2023 - Not For Distribution by Meta Platforms, Inc./Threads.net” at the bottom of every one of my posts, skipping the whole ActivityPub federation protocol and instead specifically naming the for-profit corporate entity, and they distribute it anyway, that’s a tiny headache for them if I want it to be. What if all of us who don’t want Threads to republish our content do that? It’s a slightly bigger headache, but it’s something. Enough somethings and you’re too problematic to fuck with. Why aren’t we thinking about these options?
Another thing is that our devs have gotten us this far; if they ever give us the ability to block by instance this almost becomes a non-issue. And so on. There are a lot of really bright folks here; we can come up with some good shit if we stop thinking the way Meta wants us to, in boxes made of false dichotomies and assumptions wherein we have no power.
Let any instance that wants to federate do so, and any user that wants to get that highly processed and curated fecal matter in their feed consume as much of it as they want. For myself, I’ll stay here on lemmy.world – I’m already here and I do not have to sort out the merits of one instance over another, which will be another consideration when Meta finds a way to SEO its place on join-lemmy.org and fill the first several pages with its own instances – and I will simply put threads.net and associated domains in the hosts file, find a way to personally block Meta content from anywhere else, even walk away if I have to, and be done with it.
But anyone who thinks a wolf will suddenly behave differently in the 99th henhouse it sets eyes on hasn’t lived long enough. This is Meta, and this is what Meta does. Meta ALREADY has a plan for the Fediverse as it exists today, we don’t know what it is yet but it will be as morality-free as all the rest of their activities, and anyone who participates does so at their own risk.
I think a lot of your post is spot on but one thing I do disagree with you on:
Meta doesn’t do anything “for fun” it does everything for profit. If their exec board thought that promoting well-being and good mental health was more profitable, meta would do that instead of the other shit you talk about. A minor nitpick of your post but I think it’s always worth bearing in mind that companies like meta are singularly motivated by greed.
Your point is well taken, and I thank you for the compliment, but it’s still just people in the C-suite, who started the business before they knew what direction it would take or even be successful at all, and who steer it now whether for good or for bad, whether for provocation or for supporting mental well-being. It’s the same business either way.
But over the last 20-ish years they’ve consistently steered the existing business in a very cruel direction, IMO.
And behind every cruelty for profit there’s a sociopath – or several – absolutely doing it for fun AND profit.
Do you really not think it gave some folks at Facebook a charge to be able to fuck with the moods of thousands just by tweaking the algorithm?
There’s a certain point where inner values/morality stops those of us with a conscience from harming others lightly. The lines differ, but where there is a conscience the lines are present. When there is no working conscience, and those lines aren’t there (iow, sociopathy), others are no longer seen as fully human, or even human at all, and they just become fun toys to play with.
Like Facebook achieved with their algorithms, and their propagandistic elevation of provocative, angering, and even trauma-inducing posts, and the way they actively helped subvert the choices of millions of voters by trying, and succeeding, to bait them with radicalizing content.
Profit, yes. But it took a LOT of people to say yes to all that dehumanizing manipulation at Facebook/Meta that begins from a premise of not seeing humans participating on their platforms as worthy of courtesy and respect, much less their own human equals.
I don’t think I can be convinced that among all of them, there’s not a single one who didn’t get off on the sheer POWER of it all.
Zuckerberg is on record as thinking of Facebook users as dumb fucks, and he controls the corporate culture over there. It’s his knob the C-suite and layers of middle management are slobbering. If he doesn’t think users are human, or worthy of courtesy and respect, his well-placed minions won’t either, and in turn they too will hire those that fit in with that corporate philosophy.
Some of them are only pretending to love this . . . but many more aren’t pretending at all, and the ones who would have protested are long gone by now.
A small note: in 0.19 Lemmy has introduced the ability to defederate from instances on per-user base.
Now, when lemmy.world updates, you’ll be able to block Threads from your Settings.
Many instances already updated.
Many thanks!